Antarctic Shelf Ocean Warming and Sea Ice Melt Affected by Projected El Niño Changes

Antarctic shelf ocean warming affects melt of ice shelf/sheets and sea ice but projected changes vary vastly across climate models. A projected increase in El Niño variability has been found to slow future mid-latitude Southern Ocean warming but how this impacts the Antarctic shelf ocean is unknown. Here we show that a projected increase in El Niño variability accelerates Antarctic shelf ocean warming, hastening ice shelf/sheet melt but slowing sea ice reduction.

Read more: Cai, W., Jia, F., Li, S., Purich, A., Wang, G., Wu, L., Gan, B., Santoso, A., Geng, T., Ng, B., Yang, Y., Ferreira, D., Meehl, G.A., & McPhaden, M.J. (2023). Antarctic shelf ocean warming and sea ice melt affected by projected El Niño changes. Nature Climate Change, 13, 235-239.  doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01610-x